If avant-garde, absurdist-cum-intellectual theatre with socio-political spice doesn’t sound like your fantasy of choice, I would encourage you to reconsider: having once been suspicious of “avant-garde” theatre, and being none too impressed by the typical fare of Chicago theatres’ socio-political commentary, I write with confidence that Trap Door offers something truly fresh and interesting in their curious productions. And while maybe not their strongest production to date, Fantasy Island for Dummies is still more exciting, exploratory, and entertaining than most — so long as you’re willing to dive into the oddly fantastical.

I can only imagine that Open Space thought a production of Bleacher Bums would be a commercial guarantee given its timeliness because, apart from the elaborate bleacher set, very little thought seems to have gone into this show. The most apparent and pervasive misstep in the production is its failure to make the baseball game a visceral reality. With no other crowd sounds other than the actors, the setting felt empty and devoid of energy; and the actors themselves, apart from Erik Burke as the zealously impassioned Cheerleader, brought little conviction to the game’s reality and only intermittent enthusiasm for its progress — and when there was action occurring on the field the actors oftentimes looked in different directions! (Was this supposed to be funny?) Moreover, the Wrigley Field scoreboard was a static projection of a JPEG image, so it never changed score, batter, count — anything. Why? A commentary on the sometimes-interminable feeling of baseball games? A la Beckett’s “Waiting for Santo”?